Posted on 03/06/2017 6:20:00 PM PST by Lorianne
Strip away the centralized power that protects and funds cartels, and prices would plummet.___ The mainstream narrative is "the problem is low wages." Actually, the problem is the soaring cost of living. If essentials such as healthcare, housing, higher education and government services were as cheap as they once were, a wage of $10 or $12 an hour would be more than enough to maintain a decent everyday life.
Here are some examples from the real world. In 1952, it cost $30 to have a baby in an excellent hospital. If we adjust that by official inflation as measured by the Bureau of Labor Statistic's inflation calculator to 2017, the cost would be $275. ($1 in 1952 = $9.16 in 2017).
What does it cost to have a baby delivered in a hospital today? $5,000? $10,000? Who even knows, given the convoluted billing process in today's sickcare system?
The pharmaceutical cartel jacks up medication costs per dose from $3 tp $600, even when the medication has been around for decades: the Pinworm prescription jumps from $3 to up to $600 a pill Parents, doctors angry over drug price gouging (via John F.)
My father paid 1.8% of his wages for "hospital group insurance" in the early 1950s (for a household of four kids and two adults.) For someone earning $1,000 a week, the equivalent today would be $72 a month out of a monthly gross income of $4,000.
My spouse and I pay $1330 a month for barebones healthcare insurance in today's sickcare system. Factor out subsidies paid by the employer or state, and minimal healthcare insurance costs tens of thousands of dollars per household annually.
Here's a chart that illustrates the breathtaking rise in healthcare costs. Wages are the nearly flat line:
SNIPPED, MORE ARTICLE AND GRAPHS AT SITE
One reason is law suits. There were few suits against gynecologists when the baby was not perfect. Today’s doctors pay 100,000 per year for malpractice insurance.
“Why Is the Cost of Living so Unaffordable?”
To force a once free and proud people into government subservience.
If you can’t keep up with the rat race, join the democRATS....
This is why wages are low, costs are high. They are looking for folks to capitulate into socialism.
1) Stealth taxes on everything and anything.
2) People who regard outrageous fines for traffic and parking offenses as OK because ‘you broke the law.’
This is why wages are low, costs are high. They are looking for folks to capitulate into socialism.
Yes, they are and unfortunately it has worked.
Medical care is so expensive because of government regulation and anti market activity. It started badly going off the rails when FDR got a tax break for companies offering Health Insurance instead of allowing them to raise wages to attract skilled workers. That made insurance eventually ubiquitous. Add in all the government bureaucrats that are now in the loop and your medical dollar is supporting Insurance bureaucrats and government bureaucrats. Add in the insane tort system and the cost of malpractice insurance and the requirement to treat everyone who goes to an emergency room for free if they don’t want to pay or can’t pay and all the free medicine for illegal aliens etc and only a very small fraction of one’s medical care payment goes to medical care. Remove all that stuff and most insurance will cease to exist because people will find it easier and cheaper to pay for normal medical needs out of pocket while perhaps buying a catastrophic coverage policy for the possibility of health catastrophe. That is all why it is much cheaper to go offshore for major work that doesn’t have to be done immediately.
I do not know how much of the problem is the cartelization of healthcare, and the third party payer system that was started just a few years before the graph went into effect. It was started during WWII, and took a bit to become accepted nation wide.
I expect that it was not fully up to speed by 1952.
But, we also get extremely good health care. Lifespan is up significantly. People who get cancer live longer. There are more cures and better ones for everyday problems. We have CAT scans and expensive drugs.
There are only a couple of places that have healthcare equivalent to the United States, when you compare apples to apples. Canada does not make the grade, for example.
We have a large population that pays in nothing to the system, but get superb health care for free.
It is not an easy fix. The problem has been getting worse for 70 years.
Inflation is one part of the answer. Inflation is defined as too many dollars chasing too few goods. Since the 1960s, we’ve had every type of insurance and government program imaginable thrown at healthcare... and the costs keep going up. More and more dollars are not the answer to rising costs!
The same applies to education... scholarships, grants, loans, savings, etc!
Healthcare and education have seen the greatest influx of dollars and the greatest amount of inflation. It’s not a coincidence.
That’s true, there are a lot of people who realize the system is as f’d as we do but they’re not on OUR side.
The pinworm example seems bogus. An over the counter pinworm cure is about ten bucks. No prescription neccesary and one dose is all one needs. Just dont ask how I know this.
hate it when students moan about the cost of college, and yet it is their own colleges which raise the prices, and pay their professors obscene amount of money
The author has a point, but comparing medical procedures from 1952 to today isn’t an apples to apples comparison.
Take the example of maternity costs. Many of those costs include prenatal care which is much more advanced now than in the 1950’s. If I had been pregnant in the 1950’s there is a very high chance that my son and I would both be dead now due to a complete placental previa. Our niece’s daughter would also be deceased as she had hydrocephalus.
Costs are higher, but we receive a higher level of care as a matter of routine.
Under Reagan, it was popular to be successful, make a living, to grow, to create. We can and will do that again!
Figure out how much of that is taxes, both explicit and hidden, and you will have your answer. It now takes two people to earn after tax what one once did, since half your income is going to taxes one way or another.
You’re right. And they don’t care as long as they get their goodies.
Its called the devaluing of the dollar.Its caused by fiat currency not based on anything.
Inflation is one part of the answer. Inflation is defined as too many dollars chasing too few goods.
Not necessarily. Inflation is THEFT OF VALUE by The Expansion of Credit that Spends exactly the same as current specie in Circulation, thereby DEVALUING EVERY MONETARY UNIT IN EXISTENCE.
Food, rent, gas, insurance, repairs, clothes, school supplies, etc., etc. Everything’s gone up except income (for most people).
A man leaving the grocery store today complained about the high cost for the few food items he purchased. Felt so sorry for him. He was obviously a worker, driving a company truck with gas cylinders. Looked tired. Guess he had to go home then and cook his supper after a long day at work.
Cost of living is too high. I wish people were not under quite as much stress as they are now. Progress has not been progress in many ways.
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